2023-07-01 13:49:00
The death of Nahel M., whose family hails from Algeria, stirred up the debate on police violence in France. Photo: AFP.
Security forces arrested 1,311 people in France in the fourth night of riots for the death of a teenager shot Tuesday by policewhose funeral is being held this Saturday, reported the Ministry of the Interior.
This figure represents an increase compared to Thursday, in which 875 people were arrested, according to the Ministry.
The French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, reported that the violence was “of a much lower intensity” than in the previous days, but his portfolio registered the record of detainees since the start of the revolt on Tuesday night and 79 injured policemen and gendarmes.
The incidents began in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre as a result of the death of Nahel, a 17-year-old who was shot at point blank range by a policeman during a traffic control.
The authorities reported that 1,350 vehicles were set on fire or damaged, 234 buildings burned or deteriorated and recorded 2,560 fires on public roads.
Authorities imposed curfews in at least three towns in the French capital region. Photo: AFP.
police violence
The death of Nahel M., whose family is originally from Algeria, stirred up the debate on police violence in France, where in 2022 13 people died in similar circumstances and sparked criticism of law enforcementperceived as racist by a large part of the population.
The violence that spread throughout the country despite the deployment of 45,000 agents and the use of armored vehicles to stop the protests.
They failed to stop the acts of vandalism in cities such as Marseille (south) or Lyon and Grenoble, both in the center-east, where groups of people -in many cases hooded- looted shops.
In Paris and its suburbs, despite the rain, there were also riots on saturday morning. In that area, there were 406 arrests, a police source told the AFP news agency.
Authorities imposed curfews in at least three towns in the French capital region and several others across the country.
Nahel’s funeral
Nahel will be buried this Saturday in Nanterre, the suburb 15 kilometers from Paris where he lived and where he died. There, the inhabitants prepared for the obsequies of the young man.
“Saturday, July 1, will be, for the family of Nahel M., a day of recollection,” the family’s lawyers wrote, urging the media not to attend the ceremony to “give bereaved families the privacy and respect they need”.
The Government decided to suspend all major events and requested that trams and buses stop running throughout the country after 9:00 p.m.
In the meantime, the UN asked the French authorities to deal seriously with the “deep” problems of “racism and racial discrimination” in its security forcesaccusations that the French Foreign Ministry described as “totally unfounded”.
Mounia, the victim’s mother, told France 5 that she does not blame the police, but only the agent who took her son’s life.
The justice decreed preventive detention for voluntary manslaughter for the 38-year-old agent who shot, who, according to his lawyer, asked Nahel’s “family for forgiveness.”
In an attempt to defuse the situation, the French soccer team, led by Kylian Mbappé, said in a statement that “the time for violence must stop” and make room for “peaceful and constructive ways of expressing themselves.”
“Since this tragic event, we have witnessed the expression of popular anger that we understand deep down, but we cannot accept in form,” the soccer players wrote, according to the newspaper Le Monde.
The unrest has raised concerns in other countries as France will host the Rugby World Cup next autumn and the Olympic Games in the summer of 2024.
Several European countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany and Norway have warned their citizens in France to avoid riot zones and to exercise caution.
#detainees #France #funeral #young #man #shot #police #officer